Neither Fish nor Foul

Where's Max Weber when you need him to analyze this conundrum: the "large contingent of Ph.D.'s... who are... pursuing so-called nonacademic careers within academe."

The abundant literature on alternative careers for humanities Ph.D.'s generally poses two paths: academic and nonacademic. Little of the literature deals with those of us who fall in the gray area in between. But there are dozens of us here at my own university, and the same holds true at many other institutions...

All in all, then, there's a lot to like in my quasi-academic life. But therein lies the problem: Quasi academic is not a recognized category at Prestigious U.

Nor is it a category factored into the humanities-career discussion, much of which implies that a humanities Ph.D.'s biggest employment challenge comes at the outset of the transition from faculty work -- in convincing someone to give you a job in the real world. Once you're hired, the logic goes, you quickly prove yourself to be a valuable team member, are welcomed as an equal, and invited to make contributions beyond what you might have expected. By that reasoning, the Ph.D. is a liability at first, but the skills associated with it soon become a plus.

But in a nonacademic job within academe, getting someone to hire you is not so hard. The problems come after you've signed the offer. The main difficulty, it seems, stems from the highly stratified environment of the university, where people are assigned to one of two large and rarely overlapping castes: faculty or staff. The highest status and the most power are conferred upon faculty members or top-level administrators who rose through the faculty ranks.

Staff members are most crucially defined as what we are not: We are not faculty members. Certain behaviors are appropriate for them and other behaviors for us.

Add to that the stigma of failure that is attached -- subtly but unmistakably by people within the professoriate -- to those who earn a Ph.D. and don't get a tenure-track job. So not only are we staff members in the lower category, we may also be assumed to have tried and failed to gain access to the higher one. We may, therefore, be seen as dangerous, because at one point we presumably wanted to be where they are, and may still harbor such irrational designs.